Missing the Snail Mail?

Do you miss getting letters in the mail? Does email, facebook and twitter seem convenient but a little impersonal and stilted? Do you miss the anticipation of waiting for a letter, going to the mail box, finally finding it there, opening and reading it?

I love the internet. I love social media. I love creative and fun links. I love being able to find information in 30 seconds of googling it.  I really do love all these things.  But the thing I don't love about it all?  This crazy techy/internet/amazing information at our fingertips has really made us disconnected from the process of real connection.  It's not to say real connection can't happen over the internet, it can. But the connection that I feel sad about that I know I personally miss is the good old fashioned kind: a single heartfelt letter.

For all the fancy, multimedia modes of communication out there, nothing beats the thrill of opening finding a personal letter, written and addressed just to you.

I have vivid memories of mailing letters. Snail mail was a major part of my life before I became "rjean_sassyangel@yahoo.com" when I was 14. (Yes, that was my first e-mail. No, I don't use it anymore).

When I was a little girl, I used to help my mom decorate letters to her sisters. Sometimes she would let me draw flowers or balloons on the envelopes. She always allowed me to sprinkle her favorite perfume on the pages. I was enthralled by this process, when I was four-years-old. Creating something beautiful and watching it disappear into a box seemed like magic.

A few years later, I started writing letters of my own, to cousins and long-distance friends. Since I was an ugly duckling who wasn't very popular as a child, my letters were mostly sarcastic, with random short stories and dry observations included. My friends and relatives loved my sense of humor and encouraged me to continue writing. I did.

And then e-mail took over, all of the sudden. I remember my dad asked me to come over to the computer in his office so he could show me how to use the internet and create my first yahoo account through yahoo mail

And that was the beginning of the end.

2013 is another year immersed in the digital era of social media, cell phones and e-mailing. Long gone are the days of handwriting letters and sending them through the postal service. Days of snail mail seem like something that only existed in a pre-war movie.

Now, after all these years, I wish I could go back in time. Letters were so personal, so much more real. You could sleep with a love letter under your pillow. You could store letters from friends in a special box. Reading them, clutching them in your hands, brought back memories from a forgotten past.

I want to lovingly craft a memory which someone will cherish forever. I want to tell them news they won't hear on Facebook or in a text. Why can't we have that again?